Social Security: Americans Agree VIDEO

Social Security: Just the Facts Video

COVERED: a week-by-week look at the political and legislative developments that led to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid 50 years ago. Bob Rosenblatt, Academy senior fellow and former Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent will report on the people and the maneuvers that led to this major expansion of social insurance.

Family Well-Being, Public Policy, and Economic Growth: Lessons from History and Insights for the Future

Published:September 2006

September 19, 2006 ~ A Policy Education Seminar

Views about social welfare policy are shaped by assumptions about what works, what we as a nation can afford, and how the economy responds to policy. Given rapid changes in the U.S. economy and the growing national debt, how should we think about raising and spending taxpayers' dollars for the social safety net? What does history tell us about tradeoffs between universal and targeted, or mean-tested, benefit programs for families? And equally important, what are the implications for economic growth of different choices about the shape and size of the tax system that supports the safety net? Is there a common base of facts upon which our nation's leaders can develop an enduring vision to guide social welfare policy?

The seminar featured new research by Peter H. Lindert, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California (Davis), who will draw on his recent two-volume work, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Lindert argues that, contrary to the intuition of many economists and the ideology of many politicians, social spending can contribute to, rather than inhibit, economic growth.